Castle Bravo

Castle Bravo

Castle Bravo mushroom cloud
Information
Country United States
Test series Operation Castle
Test site Bikini Atoll
Date March 1, 1954
Test type Atmospheric
Yield 15 Mt (approx. 63 PJ)

Castle Bravo was the code name given to the first United States test of a dry fuel hydrogen bomb, detonated on March 1, 1954, at Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands, as the first test of Operation Castle. Castle Bravo was the most powerful nuclear device ever detonated by the United States (and just under one-third the energy of the Tsar Bomba, the most powerful device ever detonated), with a yield of 15 megatons of TNT. That yield, far exceeding the expected yield of 4 to 8 megatons (6 Mt predicted),[1] combined with other factors, led to the most significant accidental radioactive contamination ever caused by the United States.

Fallout from the detonation—intended to be a secret test—fell on residents of Rongelap and Utirik atolls and spread around the world. The islanders were not evacuated until three days later and suffered radiation sickness. They were returned to the islands three years later but were removed again when their island was found to be unsafe.[2] The crew of the Japanese fishing vessel Daigo Fukuryū Maru ("Lucky Dragon No. 5"), was also contaminated by fallout, killing one crew member. The blast created an international reaction about atmospheric thermonuclear testing.[3]

Test location

The device was a very large cylinder weighing 23,500 pounds (10.7 t) and measuring 179.5 inches (4.56 m) in length and 53.9 inches (1.37 m) in diameter.[1] It was mounted in a "shot cab" on an artificial island built on a reef off Namu Island, in the Bikini Atoll. A sizable array of diagnostic instruments was trained on it, including high-speed cameras trained through an arc of mirror towers around the shot cab.

Coordinates for Bravo Crater are 11°41′50″N 165°16′19″E / 11.69722°N 165.27194°E. The coordinates of the remains of the Castle Bravo causeway are 11°42′6″N 165°17′7″E / 11.70167°N 165.28528°E.

Bomb design

Shrimp

The Shrimp device in its shot cab.
Type Teller-Ulam design Thermonuclear weapon
Production history
Designer Ben Diven-project engineer[4]
Designed 24 February 1954 (GMT)
Manufacturer Los Alamos National Laboratory
Number built 1
Specifications
Weight 10,659 kilograms (23,499 lb)
Length 455.93 centimeters (179.50 in)
Diameter 136.90 centimeters (53.90 in)
Filling Lithium-6 Deuteride
Blast yield 15 megatons of TNT (63 PJ)

The device detonated for the test was named "Shrimp" and was the same basic configuration as the experimental Ivy Mike device, except with a different type of fusion fuel. The Shrimp used lithium deuteride, which is solid at room temperature; Ivy Mike used cryogenic liquid deuterium, which required elaborate cooling equipment. Castle Bravo was the first test by the United States of a practical deliverable fusion bomb (hydrogen bomb). The successful test rendered the cryogenic design used by Ivy Mike and its derivative, the Mark 16 nuclear bomb, which was to be tested as Castle Echo, obsolete.

Inside the cylindrical case was a smaller cylinder of lithium deuteride fusion fuel (the secondary) with a fission atomic bomb (the primary) at one end, the latter employed to create the conditions needed to start the fusion reaction. Running down the center of the secondary, was a cylindrical rod of plutonium (the sparkplug), which fissioned with compression and neutrons from the primary, and compressed the fusion material around it from the inside. Surrounding this assembly was a uranium tamper. The space between the tamper and the case formed a radiation channel to conduct X-rays from the primary to the secondary; the space is filled with plastic which turns to plasma from the x-rays, which in turn compress the secondary (see Teller-Ulam design) externally, increasing the density and temperature of the fusion fuel to the level needed to sustain a thermonuclear reaction.[5] (See nuclear weapon design.)

It was practically identical to the "Runt" device later detonated in Castle Romeo, but used partially enriched lithium in the fusion fuel. Natural lithium is a mixture of lithium-6 and lithium-7 isotopes (with 7.5% of the former). The enriched lithium used in Bravo was approximately 40% lithium-6. The primary was a RACER IV tritium-boosted atomic bomb, specifically designed as a thermonuclear primary.[1]

Detonation

The Castle Bravo mushroom cloud.

The detonation took place at 06:45 on March 1, 1954 local time (18:45 on February 28 GMT).[6]

When Bravo was detonated, it formed a fireball almost four and a half miles (roughly 7 km) across within a second. This fireball was visible on Kwajalein atoll over 250 miles (400 km) away. The explosion left a crater 6,500 feet (2,000 m) in diameter and 250 feet (76 m) in depth. The mushroom cloud reached a height of 47,000 feet (14,000 m) and a diameter of 7 miles (11 km) in about a minute; it then reached a height of 130,000 feet (40 km) and 62 miles (100 km) in diameter in less than 10 minutes and was expanding at more than 100 meters per second (360 km/h; 220 mph). As a result of the blast, the cloud contaminated more than seven thousand square miles of the surrounding Pacific Ocean including some of the surrounding small islands like Rongerik, Rongelap and Utirik.[7]

In terms of TNT tonnage equivalence, Castle Bravo was about 1,000 times more powerful than each of the atomic bombs which were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. The largest nuclear explosion ever produced was a test conducted by the Soviet Union seven and a half years later, the 50 Mt Tsar Bomba. Castle Bravo is the fifth largest nuclear explosion in history, exceeded by the Soviet tests of Tsar Bomba at 50.6 Mt, Test 219 (24.2 Mt), and two other ~20 Mt Soviet tests in 1962 at Novaya Zemlya.

Cause of high yield

The yield of 15 megatons was three times the yield of 5 Mt predicted by its designers.[1][8] The cause of the higher yield was a theoretical error made by designers of the device at Los Alamos National Laboratory. They considered only the lithium-6 isotope in the lithium deuteride secondary to be reactive; the lithium-7 isotope, accounting for 60% of the lithium content, was assumed to be inert.[8] It was expected that lithium-6 isotope would absorb a neutron from the fissioning plutonium and emit an alpha particle and tritium in the process, of which the latter would then fuse with the deuterium and increase the yield in a predicted manner. Lithium-6 indeed reacted in this manner.

It was assumed that the lithium-7 would absorb one neutron, producing lithium-8 which decays (via beryllium-8) to a pair of alpha particles on a timescale of seconds—vastly longer than the timescale of nuclear detonation. However, when lithium-7 is bombarded with energetic neutrons, rather than simply absorbing a neutron, it captures the neutron and decays almost instantly into an alpha particle, a tritium nucleus, and another neutron. As a result, much more tritium was produced than expected, the extra tritium fusing with deuterium and producing an extra neutron. The extra neutron produced by fusion and the extra neutron released directly by lithium-7 decay produced a much larger neutron flux. The result was greatly increased fissioning of the uranium tamper and increased yield.

This resultant extra fuel (both lithium-6 and lithium-7) contributed greatly to the fusion reactions and neutron production and in this manner greatly increased the device's explosive output. The test used lithium with a high percentage of lithium-7 only because lithium-6 was then scarce and expensive; the later Castle Union test used almost pure lithium-6. Had sufficient lithium-6 been available, the usability of the common lithium-7 might not have been discovered.

Fallout

The Bravo fallout plume spread dangerous levels of radioactivity over an area over 100 miles (160 km) long, including inhabited islands. The contour lines show the cumulative radiation exposure in roentgens (R) for the first 96 hours after the test.[9] Although widely published, this fallout map is not perfectly correct.[10]

The fission reactions of the natural uranium tamper were quite dirty, producing a large amount of fallout. That, combined with the much-larger-than-expected yield and a major wind shift, produced some very serious consequences. In the de-classified film Operation Castle, task force commander Major General Percy Clarkson points to a diagram indicating that the wind shift was still in the range of "acceptable fallout", although just barely.

The decision to carry out the Bravo test under the prevailing winds was made by Dr. Alvin C. Graves, the Scientific Director of Operation Castle. Graves had total authority over detonating the weapon, above that of the military Commander of Operation Castle. Graves appears in the widely available film of the earlier 1952 test "Ivy Mike", which examines the last-minute fallout decisions. The narrator, Western actor Reed Hadley, is filmed aboard the control ship in that film, showing the final conference. Hadley points out that 20,000 people live in the potential area of the fallout. He asks the control panel scientist if the test can be aborted and is told "yes", but it would ruin all their preparations in setting up timed measuring instruments in the race against the Russians. In Mike the fallout correctly landed north of the inhabited area but, in the 1954 Bravo test, there was a lot of wind shear, and the wind that was blowing north the day before the test steadily veered towards the east. (In the 1946 Los Alamos accident Graves' personal friend, Louis Alexander Slotin, died from radiation exposure and Graves had himself received an exposure of 400 röntgens, or 3.5 grays (Gy).)

Radioactive fallout was spread eastward onto the inhabited Rongelap and Rongerik atolls, which were evacuated[11] 48 hours after the detonation.[12] Subsequently many Marshall Islands natives suffered from birth defects and received compensation from the U.S. federal government. A medical study, named Project 4.1, studied the effects of the fallout on the islanders.[12]

Map showing points (X) where contaminated fish were caught or where the sea was found to be excessively radioactive. B=original "danger zone" around Bikini announced by the U.S. government. W="danger zone" extended later. xF=position of the Lucky Dragon fishing boat. NE, EC, and SE are equatorial currents.
Medical examination of the people who were affected by the fallout.

Although the atmospheric fallout plume drifted eastward, once fallout landed in the water it was carried in several directions by ocean currents, including northwest and southwest.[13]

A Japanese fishing boat, Daigo Fukuryū Maru (Lucky Dragon No.5), came in direct contact with the fallout, which caused many of the crew to grow ill; one died of a secondary infection. This resulted in an international incident and reignited Japanese concerns about radiation, especially as Japanese citizens were once more adversely affected by U.S. nuclear weapons.[14] The official U.S. position had been that the growth in the strength of atomic bombs was not accompanied by an equivalent growth in radioactivity released. Japanese scientists who had collected data from the fishing vessel disagreed with this. Sir Joseph Rotblat, working at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, demonstrated that the contamination caused by the fallout from the test was far greater than that stated officially. Rotblat was able to deduce that the bomb had three stages and showed that the fission phase at the end of the explosion increased the amount of radioactivity a thousandfold. Rotblat's paper was taken up by the media, and the outcry in Japan reached such a level that diplomatic relations became strained and the incident was even dubbed by some as "a second Hiroshima".[15] Nevertheless, the Japanese and U.S. governments quickly reached a political settlement, with the transfer to Japan of US $15,300,000 as compensation,[16] with the surviving victims receiving about ¥ 2 million each ($5,550 in 1954, or about $48,700 in 2015)[17] It was also agreed that the victims would not be given Hibakusha status.

The device's firing crew were located on Enyu island, variously spelt as Eneu island as depicted here

Unanticipated fallout and the radiation emitted by it also affected many of the vessels and personnel involved in the test, in some cases forcing them into bunkers for several hours.[18] In contrast to the crew of the Lucky Dragon No. 5, who did not appreciate the hazard and therefore did not take shelter in the hold of their ship, or refrain from licking the fallout dust,[19] the firing crew that triggered the explosion were able to safely shelter in their firing station when they noticed the wind was carrying the fallout in the unanticipated direction towards the island of Enyu on the Bikini Atoll where they were located, with the fire crew sheltering in place or "button[ing] up" until several hours had passed and the radiation levels outside had decayed to values safe enough to travel in.[18][20]

Sixteen crew members of the aircraft carrier USS Bairoko received beta burns and there was an increased cancer rate among its crew. Radioactive contamination also affected many of the testing facilities built on other islands of the Bikini atoll system.

The fallout spread traces of radioactive material as far as Australia, India and Japan, and even the United States and parts of Europe. Though organized as a secret test, Castle Bravo quickly became an international incident, prompting calls for a ban on the atmospheric testing of thermonuclear devices.[21]

A world-wide network of gummed film stations was established to monitor fallout following Operation Castle. Although meteorological data were poor, a general connection of tropospheric flow patterns with observed fallout was evident. There was a tendency for fallout/debris to remain in tropical latitudes, with incursions into the temperate regions associated with meteorological disturbances of the predominantly zonal flow. Outside of the tropics, the Southwestern United States received the greatest total fallout, about five times that received in Japan.[22]

Stratospheric fallout particles of Strontium-90 from the test were later captured with Balloon-borne air filters used to sample the air at stratospheric altitudes, the research (Project Ashcan) was conducted to better understand the stratosphere, fallout times and arrive at more accurate meteorological models after hindcasting, the research was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research in 1959.[23][24]

In addition to the radiological accident, the unexpectedly high yield of the device severely damaged many of the permanent buildings on the control site island on the far side of the atoll. Little of the desired diagnostic data on the shot was collected; many instruments designed to transmit their data back before being destroyed by the blast were instead vaporized instantly, while most of the instruments that were expected to be recovered for data retrieval were destroyed by the blast.

The fallout also affected islanders who had previously inhabited the atoll, and who returned there some time after the tests. This was found to be due to the presence of radioactive caesium in locally grown coconut milk. Plants and trees absorb potassium as part of the normal biological process, but will also readily absorb caesium if present, being of the same group on the periodic table, and therefore very similar chemically.[25] Islanders consuming contaminated coconut milk were found to have abnormally high concentrations of caesium in their bodies and then had to be evacuated from the atoll a second time.

The American magazine Consumer Reports warned of the contamination of milk with strontium-90.[26]

In 2013 the Defense Threat Reduction Agency released Castle Bravo:Fifty years of Legend and Lore.[27]

Weapon history

The Soviet Union had previously used lithium deuteride in its Sloika design (known as the "Joe-4" in the U.S.), in 1953. It was not a true hydrogen bomb; fusion provided only 15–20 percent of its yield, most coming from boosted fission reactions. Its yield was 400 kilotons, and it could not be infinitely scaled, as with a true thermonuclear device.

The Teller-Ulam-based "Ivy Mike" device had a much greater yield of 10.4 Mt, but most of this also came from fission: 77 percent of the total came from fast fission of its natural uranium tamper.

Castle Bravo had the greatest yield of any U.S. nuclear test, 15 Mt, though again, a substantial fraction came from fission. In the Teller-Ulam design, the fission and fusion stages were kept physically separate in a reflective cavity. The radiation from the exploding fission primary brought the fuel in the fusion secondary to critical density and pressure, setting off thermonuclear (fusion) chain-reactions, which in turn set off a tertiary fissioning of the bomb's outer casing. Consequently this type of bomb is also known as a "fission-fusion-fission" device. The Soviet researchers, led by Andrei Sakharov, developed and tested their first Teller-Ulam device in 1955.

The publication of the Bravo fallout analysis was a militarily sensitive issue, with Joseph Rotblat possibly deducing the staging nature of the Castle Bravo device by studying the ratio and presence of tell-tale isotopes, namely uranium-237, present in the fallout.[28] With this information having a history of being regarded as potentially revealing the means by which megaton yield nuclear devices achieve their yield.[29] In the History of the Teller–Ulam design, Soviet scientist Sakharov hit upon what the Soviet Union regarded as "Sakharov's third idea" during the month after the Castle Bravo test, the final piece of the puzzle being the idea that the compression of the secondary can be accomplished by the primary's x-rays before fusion began.

The Shrimp device design later evolved into the Mark 21 nuclear bomb, of which 275 units were produced, weighing 15,000 pounds (6,800 kg) and measuring 12.5 feet (3.8 m) long and 56 inches (1.4 m) in diameter. This 4-megaton bomb was produced until July 1956. In 1957, it was converted into the Mark 36 nuclear bomb and entered into production again.

Cultural impact

As a result of the extensive fallout, Nevil Shute wrote the novel On the Beach which was released in 1957. The novel is about a war that released so much radioactive fallout that all the life in the Northern Hemisphere disappeared, while the Southern Hemisphere awaited a similar fate. However the American government voiced a criticism of this general premise, that there was a threat of extinction from nuclear war because they did not, nor have they ever, had enough nuclear weapons to cause human extinction.[30] Similarly the premise that all of humanity would die following a nuclear war and only the "cockroaches would survive" is critically dealt with in the book Would the Insects Inherit the Earth and Other Subjects of Concern to Those Who Worry About Nuclear War. A combination of the Castle Bravo detonation, alongside the subsequent poisoning of the Lucky Dragon 5, and the resultant flashbacks to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki all culminated in the creation of what is perhaps Japan's most widely recognized media icon, Godzilla.[31]

See also

References

Citations
  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Castle.html retrieved Oct. 8, 2013
  2. ↑ "The Ghost Fleet of Bikini Atoll". August 9, 2010. A&E Television Networks. Military History Channel. Retrieved May 4, 2012. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  3. ↑ John Bellamy Foster (2009). The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet, Monthly Review Press, New York, p. 73.
  4. ↑ Danneskiold, Jim (14 April 2005). "Operation Castle tests focus of April 20 panel discussion". Archived from the original on 7 May 2009.
  5. ↑ Rhodes Chapter 23
  6. ↑ "Nuclear Weapon Archive". Retrieved 2008-03-01.
  7. ↑ Titus, A. Costandina. Bombs in the backyard atomic testing and American politics. Reno: University of Nevada P, 2001. Google Books. .
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Rhodes p. 541
  9. ↑ http://www.nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Castle.html
  10. ↑ Defense Threat Reduction Agency DTRIAC SR-12-001 CASTLE BRAVO:FIFTY YEARS OF LEGEND AND LORE A Guide to Off - Site Radiation Exposures January 2013
  11. ↑ "Les cobayes du Dr Folamour" (in French).
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 "Nuclear Issues". Retrieved 2006-03-26.
  13. ↑ S. Sevitt, "The Bombs," The Lancet, July 23, 1955, pp. 199-201.
  14. ↑ Rhodes, p.542
  15. ↑ Beverly Deepe Keever (February 25, 2004). "Shot in the Dark". Honolulu Weekly. Archived from the original on 12 July 2011. Retrieved 2008-11-30. The Japanese government and people dubbed it “a second Hiroshima” and it nearly led to severing diplomatic relations
  16. ↑ 50 Facts About U.S. Nuclear Weapons. Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940. Brookings Institute. "Money paid by the State Department to Japan following fallout from the 1954 "Bravo" test: $15,300,000"
  17. ↑ Keiji Hirano (February 29, 2004). "Bikini Atoll H-bomb damaged fisheries, created prejudice". Chugoku. Retrieved 2008-11-30.
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 Dr. John C. Clark as told to Robert Cahn (July 1957). "Trapped by Radioactive Fallout, Saturday Evening Post" (PDF). accessed Feb 20, 2013
  19. ↑ Hoffman, Michael, "Forgotten atrocity of the atomic age", Japan Times, 28 August 2011, p. 11.
  20. ↑ http://www.dgely.com/Bikini/Nuclear%20Testing/Operation%20Castle/Operation%20Castle%20Bravo%20Blast.htm The Bravo device was detonated from a firing station located on Enyu Island. Given the proximity of the firing station to ground zero and the surprise yield of the blast, the crew within the bunker were shaken, but well protected from the radiation. Outside the bunker after 1 hour, radiation levels were 250 Rems/hour. Inside: .035Rems/hour...As shown above this vessel was exposed to [around] 1,000 rads, well above the threshold where vomiting and severe physical effects are felt.
  21. ↑ DeGroot 2004, pp. 196-198
  22. ↑ WORLD-WIDE FALLOUT FROM OPERATION CASTLE R. J. List, full text, Weather Bureau, Washington, D.C. 1955 DOI: 10.2172/4279860
  23. ↑ Analysis of stratospheric strontium90 measurements, L. Machta R. J. List, Journal of Geophysical Research, Volume 64, Issue 9, pages 1267–1276, September 1959
  24. ↑ http://www.osti.gov/scitech/biblio/4225048 ANALYSIS OF STRATOSPHERIC STRONTIUM-90 MEASUREMENTS Weather Bureau, Washington, D.C. 1959-03-01
  25. ↑ "WebElements Periodic Table of the Elements Caesium biological information". Retrieved 12 November 2013.
  26. ↑ Nash, Gary B., Julie Roy Jeffrey, John R. Howe, Peter J. Frederick, Allen F. Davis, Allan M. Winkler, Charlene Mires, and Carla Gardina Pestana. The American People, Concise Edition Creating a Nation and a Society, Combined Volume (6th Edition). New York: Longman, 2007.
  27. ↑ Defense Threat Reduction Agency DTRIAC SR -12-001 CASTLE BRAVO:FIFTY YEARS OF LEGEND AND LORE A Guide to Off - Site Radiation Exposures January 2013
  28. ↑ Joseph Rotblat: visionary for peace. By Reiner Braun, Wiley-VCH, 2007 ISBN 3-527-40690-5
  29. ↑ https://www.princeton.edu/sgs/publications/sgs/pdf/2_4DeGeer.pdf The Radioactive Signature of the Hydrogen Bomb.
  30. ↑ http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/ap1001/bartlett.htm
  31. ↑ Mushroom Clouds and Mushroom Men - The Fantastic Cinema of Ishiro Honda (by Peter H. Brothers, published by AuthorHouse in 2009)
Bibliography

External links

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Coordinates: 11°41′50″N 165°16′19″E / 11.69722°N 165.27194°E